FIDELITY TO THE RELIGIOUS LIFE

While not as yet giving you an account or summary of the conversations which took place at the recent most profitable
meeting of major superiors, it seems to me opportune within the context of the Monthly Bulletin to encourage you to
rekindle the grace of the religious life which is in you.
If it is true to say that the major superiors have become more keenly aware of the need to further and encourage
community life, which is a setting within which the religious life finds strength and flourishes, nonetheless it has to be
noted that what gives community life its existence and effectiveness is the true and authentic religious.
The obligation to lead an authentic religious life is not limited to superiors. The young religious, fresh from the
scholasticate, as well as the experienced missionary, can and must be a convinced religious, determined at any cost to
live out his religious profession according to the rule and the constitutions, conformably with the vows he has made
before God and the Church.
It is no good blaming the grace of the religious life; it is not that grace which is useless or ineffectual. All too often,
alas, it is the religious himself who is found wanting. Certainly superiors must not neglect anything that may facilitate
the religious life, but those who are faithful to their vows find and receive from Our Lord the grace to persevere in that
fidelity whatever the circumstances.
The weakness of our will is one of the consequences of original sin, but all our years of training are designed to
strengthen our will and to obtain for us the supernatural and natural aids necessary to maintain it in the pursuit of good,
of duty and of the will of God.
Those who complain that they do not find in their religious life the source of their interior life and of their missionary
zeal are often those who have not sufficiently accepted or assimilated the training they have received.
It is the good religious who makes a good community, and not always the good community that makes a good religious.
Our missionary life demands of us an interior life constantly renewed at the authentic sources of grace, and our
religious formation must facilitate this ceaseless renewal. In this connection I set before you some words of our Holy
Father, Pope Paul VI, which will help you understand still better the need for a personal, profound and convinced
religious life:
<Quote>Men who have the honor of being called to be co-workers with the Savior in transmitting this divine life to
souls must think of themselves as modest but faithful instruments, bound to draw from the one and only source, which
is Jesus Christ.
To behave in the exercise of the apostolate as though Jesus were not the sole life-principle, to forget that one's role is a
secondary and subordinate one, to expect success solely from one's personal activity and one's own capabilities, is to fall
into a deadly error, which leads to a fatal inversion of values. Such behavior substitutes a natural, feverish agitation for
the action of God; it reckons without the power of grace and, in effect, treats the supernatural life, the power of prayer
and the economy of Redemption as mere abstractions.
Be deeply and firmly convinced of the priority of the interior life over the active life. Your purpose is the spiritual
conquest of the world; you are to build up the Kingdom of God, that is the Church, to penetrate and save the age in
which we live, to restore sense, harmony and a Christian spirit to every aspect of the confused life of the present day.
You must do it all without assimilating yourselves to the world, without merging into the world, because in the words of
the Lord, Christ, priests de mundo non sunt, sicut et Ego non sum de mundo (Jn. 17:16: "They are not of the world, as I
also am not of the world"). You must always keep your priestly character and identity intact and unchanged. You are
not to let yourselves be manipulated by the spirit of the world, but rather, beings sons of God, by the Spirit of God,
quicumque enim Spiritu Dei aguntur, ii sunt filii Dei (Rom. 8:14: "For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are
the sons of God"). That is why the Church wants you free from all earthly attachments, and counsels detachment, and
poverty and simplicity of life: Nolite possidere aurum, neque argentum, neque pecuniam in zonis vestris (Matt. 10:9:
Do not possess gold, nor silver, nor money in your purses"). On this difficult road the Church, as a good mother,
provides you with a true abundance, the abundance of grace. The grace you receive, the integral, full and
superabundant possession of God, can be passed on to others, because you will become "ministers of Christ and the
dispensers of the mysteries of God," ministers of grace: Sic nos existimet homo ut ministros Christi et dispensatores
mysteriorum Dei (I Cor.4:1). Unusquisque, sicut accepit gratiam, in alterutrum illam administrantes, sicut boni
dispensatores multiformis gratiae Dei (I Pet.4:10: "As every man hath received grace, ministering the same to one
another: as good stewards of the manifold grace of God").
If you maintain the absolute primacy of this activity and of the supernatural life within you, it will be able more easily,
more confidently, and more profitably to engage in dialogue with souls, and you will be able to understand all those
who have only a vague memory of the Christian life, as though the sacred character they received at Baptism had
remained inoperative.
To prove that the apostolic man must be constantly renewed in Christ, St. Bernard of Clairvaux reminds him: Si sapis,
concham te exhibebis, non canalem; "If you are wise, be a vessel, not a conduit, for the conduit simply lets the water it
receives run away without retaining a single drop; the vessel, on the other hand, starts off by filling up and then,
without emptying but indeed while being constantly replenished, it overflows and irrigates the fields" (Serm.18 in
cant.).
By remaining faithful in meditation, which will keep alight the fire of divine love, you will nourish the interior life and
prevent it being eroded by action; in living the liturgical life as desired by the conciliar constitution De Sacra Liturgia
you will discover an inexhaustible source of the interior life, and hence of the ministry. It will be easier for you to
remain on a supernatural level in all that you do, which will be a powerful aid to making your life conform ever more
closely to that of Christ. A fervent devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin will be for you a sure guarantee of success and of
faithfulness to the ideal of your vocation.
<Body text>(Extract from an allocution of Paul VI to the Brazilian College on the primacy of the supernatural life, 28th
April, 1964. From the Osservatore Romano, 8th May, 1964.)
Undated Letter.